I had a great time hanging out with Rob Zacny and some dude named Soren Johnson — if that is his real name — on the latest episode of Three Moves Ahead. Neither of them took me up on my offer for coffee. Instead, we got busy talking about Age of Empires Online.
So many storylines run through the Battle of Britain that it’s hard to decide where to start. The evolution of airpower theory in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The secretive growth of the Luftwaffe after the Treaty of Versailles. The design and development of the main mechanical protagonists: the Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, and Messerschmidt 109, as well as the German medium bombers, at least one of which started out as an airliner. British Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, who almost singlehandedly devised and directed a coherent strategy for fighting the battle. German Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring, who did not. The ballroom at Bentley Priory, which was converted into the first real “war room” over two decades before Dr. Strangelove. The female air controllers who served there and elsewhere, constituting an irreplaceable contribution to the war effort every bit as much a part of it as the fighter pilots. Those pilots themselves, including the refugees from conquered lands who ended up being among the highest scoring aces in the battle. A lone democratic island nation against an ascendant continental tribe gripped by an abhorrent ideology. It’s no wonder that it’s one of the most written-about battles in the English language. What if any of those storylines had read differently? Would you be speaking German?
After the jump, achtung, dummkopf! Continue reading →
I could lie and say that I don’t really pay attention to my gamerscore on Xbox Live, and that one of the reasons I prefer playing games on my 360 instead of my PS3 isn’t because the achievements add to my gamerscore, and that I just happened to notice that I topped 50,000 points when I got the “Stealing is wrong, kids!” achievement in Bodycount for “diminishing the scavenger population”.
But none of those things is true. I can’t help but follow achievements and my gamerscore. It’s an insidious system because it’s effective. And I do gravitate to games on the 360 partly for that illusory feeling that I’m contributing to a body of work. And I noticed the exact moment I topped 50,000 because I was waiting for it to happen.
I was at 49,987 when the “achievement earned” sound dinged and that little box popped up on the screen. I checked the list, but the achievement was only 5 points for killing ten enemies with mines. I was still 18 points away from 50,000. Shortly thereafter, the sound dinged again. It was a 20 pointer for killing some indeterminate number of the guys who run around the levels picking up the scattered tokens that power your special abilities. “Stealing is wrong, kids!” it read. “Diminish the Scavenger Population”.
So here I sit, after six years, with a gamerscore of 50,002. I wish I could turn that feature off so it would stop distracting me from more important pursuits. Like finally getting a platinum trophy on the PS3.
